Libel, the Media, and Constitutional Legitimacy

We the People

National Constitution Center

News, News Commentary, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cries of “defamation” came from the White House following the publication of in-depth reporting on President Donald Trump and his finances by The New York Times, but this is not the first time the president has expressed criticism of the press or U.S. libel laws. Adam Liptak of The New York Times and NYU Law Professor Richard Epstein join Jeffrey Rosen to explain what libel is and how laws against libel and slander fit within the First Amendment’s protections of free speech and the free press. Liptak and Epstein also debate media objectivity today and the effect of the heated coverage of the Kavanaugh confirmation battle on the legitimacy of our democratic institutions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome
0:09.5	to We The People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.
0:13.2	The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit institution chartered by Congress
0:18.8	to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.
0:25.0	Recently President Donald Trump criticized the New York Times and called for a change in the libel laws.
0:31.0	This is not the first time the President has criticized the times and the press.
0:35.2	Our topic today, what is libel? What do the libel laws say? What would the consequences of changing them be, and should they be change?
0:45.0	Joining us are two of America's leading experts on liable and free speech, and it's such an honor
0:49.5	to have them both.
0:51.2	Adam Liptack is the remarkably distinguished Supreme Court
0:54.8	correspondent for the New York Times. He writes sidebar a column on legal
0:59.0	developments and among his many other achievements he practiced law for 14 years including in the Times's legal his Lawrence, a Tish professor of law at the NYU School of Law, and among the most distinguished
1:16.7	scholars of the Constitution in the country.
1:19.4	Adam, Richard, thank you so much for joining.
1:21.8	Pleasure.
1:23.0	Let's jump right in.
1:24.0	Adam, the president has called for changing the libel laws.
1:28.0	This would require an alteration in the actual malice standard, recognized in the actual malice standard recognized in the 1964 New York Times case.
1:37.0	The actual malice standard means that news organizations have to knowingly published a falsehood
1:42.0	or published it with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
1:46.0	Where did the actual malice standard come from?
1:51.0	Should it be changed and if it were changed, would the president
	...

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